Decoupling for magnetostatics

Outlines a semi-analytic technique for simplifying the assembly and solution of systems of equations resulting from the use of the boundary integral method in magnetostatics. The analysis can be extended to cover the nonlinear domain but attention is restricted to linear magnetostatics. The method is based on domain decomposition and the superposition of potentials. This significantly reduces computational complexity and allows `large´ problems to be solved more easily on multiprocessor systems. The author details a method which is essentially `cubic´, i.e. doubling the number of processors yields an eightfold `speed-up´. This is achieved by apportioning the solution space to subdomains upon which decoupled solutions can be obtained. The fully coupled solution can then be determined by linear relations based on the superposition of decoupled potentials. Algorithms based on this method are being implemented on an Intel Hypercube at Daresbury Laboratory